What are Memberships?

Memberships in infoodle is a paid package that lets your organisation create, sell, manage and renew membership products — from a simple annual individual membership to complex household or age-based tiers with discounts, add-ons and automated billing.

It optionally works alongside the Portal package, which gives your members their own login to join, pay, renew and manage their membership themselves — without needing the office to step in.

What the Memberships add-on gives you

With Memberships active on your infoodle site, you can:

• Create membership products — define what you offer, who it is for, what it costs and when it is available
• Control who qualifies — set eligibility rules based on age, gender, group membership or custom field values
• Price flexibly — charge a flat fee, per-person rates, or tiered rates based on household size; vary the price by age, gender, pay frequency or custom field
• Add optional and mandatory extras — attach add-ons such as a newsletter, locker or camp levy to a membership product
• Set discounts — apply a standing concession from a person's custom field or a time-limited promotional discount
• Choose how long memberships last — fixed-length periods that renew, lifetime memberships that never expire, or open-ended free memberships
• Offer flexible payment schedules — let members pay annually, half-yearly, quarterly, monthly or fortnightly
• Automate renewals — either charge members automatically (silent) or notify them to confirm each renewal
• Bulk-create memberships — use Generate Memberships to bring an existing member base into infoodle in one run
• Report on your membership base — see who has a failed payment, who is in their grace period, who comes up for renewal, and what each product is worth
• Integrate with Gift Aid and Xero — connect membership payments to your Gift Aid claims and Xero account codes

What the Portal gives your members

The Portal is a separate space on your infoodle site where members sign in with their own login. Depending on what you switch on in Portal Configuration, a member can:

• Browse the memberships your organisation offers and join one themselves
• Pay outstanding balances, change their payment method and spread a balance over instalments
• Confirm or decline a renewal when your organisation requires it
• View their giving history, pledges, statements and tax receipts
• Update their own contact details
• Send a message to your office and receive a reply

Members only ever see their own records. They cannot reach the rest of infoodle.

How the two add-ons relate

Memberships and Portal are independent add-ons — you can have either one on its own:

Key concepts

Membership product — one of the memberships your organisation offers, for example Annual Individual or Family Membership. Each product carries its own code, pricing, eligibility rules, duration, payment schedule and renewal settings.

Coverage — who a single membership covers. Options are Individual, Household (whole), Household (per-person subset), Adults only, Children only, or Organisation.

Rate rules — the price table for a product. infoodle works down the table and charges the first row that fits the member being priced. Without at least one rate row, no one can join.

Duration — how long a membership lasts. Fixed length memberships renew; Lifetime and Free (no expiry) memberships have no end date and never renew.

Renewal mode — Silent (auto-charge) charges the member automatically when the renewal falls due. Confirm required notifies the member and waits for them to say yes in the Portal before charging.

Membership status — every membership is always in one of six states:

Active and Grace are the two statuses that answer yes to "is this person currently a member?" Everything in infoodle that asks that question — reporting, eligibility checks, the Portal — uses both.

Where to find Memberships in infoodle

Once the Memberships add-on is active, three entries appear on the Finance menu:

• Membership Products — create and manage what you offer
• Generate Memberships — bulk-create memberships for a group of people
• Membership Reports — four ready-made reports: failed renewals, currently in grace, upcoming renewals, and revenue by product

The Portal is accessible at your usual infoodle address. Members who hold the Portal access role permission are taken straight to the Portal when they sign in.

Administration screens for Portal configuration and Portal messages appear under the administration cog once the Portal add-on is active.

Getting started

If Memberships or Portal is not yet on your site, see Turning on the Membership and Portal add-on packages.

Once both are active, a typical first-time setup looks like this:

1. Configure the Portal — decide which features your members can see (Administration → Portal Configuration)
2. Create your first membership product — set the code, title, account code and availability dates (Finance → Membership Products → New Membership)
3. Set coverage and eligibility — who the membership is for and who qualifies
4. Add rate rules — set the price
5. Set duration and payment schedule — how long it lasts and how members can pay
6. Configure renewal settings — automatic or member-confirmed
7. Give members Portal access — create a Portal role and assign it to the right people
8. Invite members to sign in — or use Generate Memberships to bulk-load your existing base

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